Why we need to review joint enterprise laws

By Sean Creaney

| 01 February 2018

Joint enterprise is a controversial common law doctrine. It was claimed - in a recent debate secured by the Labour MP Lucy Powell - joint enterprise has ‘produced one of the biggest and most widespread miscarriages of justice ever to face our justice system'. Many MPs backed calls for a review.

Put simply, joint enterprise is when two or more people are deemed criminally liable for a single crime. You can be deemed criminally liable by being associated with a crime even if involvement was peripheral. In other words, they don't have to have shown intent or have delivered the ‘killer blow'.

At the Edge Hill event, Jan discussed her son Jordan Cunliffe's case, explaining how he did not witness the murder of Gary Newlove as he was blind. Thus, Jan said he could not have understood what was happening let alone encourage what he could not see. Despite this, the jury found him guilty of murder and as Jan alluded to this was because of joint enterprise, or the notion of ‘possible foresight' being applied.

It has been argued Jordan Cunliffe has one thing in common with others listed on the JENGbA website - they have not been found guilty ‘beyond all reasonable doubt' but rather on the basis of a ‘possibility'.

The government need to take the JENGbA campaign seriously. I urge you to support the brave and persistent JENGbA campaign and help to address wrongful convictions of, according to JENGbA and acknowledged in the recent debate in the House of Commons, hundreds of innocent people.